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Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics

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Lee and George have set forth a sophisticated refutation of the philosophical idea called "body-self dualism". At the heart of this philosophy is the view that humans persons are not deserving of moral respect in virtue of being whole, living, bodily human organisms, but in virtue of some quality which they develop over time, usually consciousness. It follows that human persons are something other than their bodies (not more than their bodies, but other than their bodies), that consciousness is personal but living bodies without consciousness are subpersonal. It further follows that those who are not yet conscious (e.g., embryos and fetuses), and those who have irretrievably lost consciousness (e.g., those in irreversible commas) are not persons and therefore may be treated instrumentally and even killed for the good of others. This reasoning underlies justifications for euthanasia, abortion and embryo destructive experimentation.
Lee and George set forth a basic argument in defense of the view that bodily (biological) life is an essential and intrinsic aspect of persons. They entertain extensive objections against this view. And then they put the view to work in relation to several contemporary controversial moral issues: hedonism and hedonistic drug taking, abortion, euthanasia and issues in sexual ethics.
The basic argument goes like this: sensation is a bodily act of a living being; therefore the agent that senses is a bodily entity, an animal; but in humans, the agent who senses also reasons and has self-awareness; therefore the agent who reasons and has self-awareness is a bodily entity, not a spiritual entity making use of the body as an extrinsic instrument.
Having established the animality of human beings, Lee and George in chapter two argue that human are nevertheless unique kinds of animals, animals with a radical difference from all other bodily beings, which requires that they be treated radically different from the way all other animals are treated. They argue, in other words, that the animal organism that constitutes the human being is a "person". And that the personhood claim is fully compatible with the animalist claim. This of course takes careful argument, which Lee and George execute masterfully.
Their `human organisms are human persons' argument has obvious and profound implications. For example, in chapter four it is used to address the issue of abortion. It leads to the conclusion that human embryos and fetuses are complete, though immature, human beings. But since human beings are human persons, embryos and fetuses are human persons. Since humans are deserving of full moral respect in virtue of being persons (i.e., in virtue of that which separates them from other animals), embryos and fetuses are deserving of full moral respect.
Similarly, in chapter five, treating euthanasia, they argue that since human beings remain persons throughout their entire duration as animal organisms (i.e., until organismic death), they retain the basis of their full moral worth -- and hence remain entitled to full moral respect --even when their health is diminished, even radically diminished by disease or incapacity.
Finally, in chapter six treating sex and the body Lee and George argue that since bodies are not extrinsic to persons but are fully personal, they cannot be treated as mere extrinsic tools in the pursuit of fulfillment by the conscious self. This indeed is how they are envisaged in contemporary forms of both sexual liberalism and libertinism, which, the authors argue, rely on an untenable dualistic conception of the person. They carefully argue that the traditional view that sexual activity is morally right only in marriage, and as open to new life and embodying marital unity, "is the only view consistent with the bodily nature of the human person."
The text is the most systematic and rigorous defense of the substantial unity of the human person available today and a most formidable critique of the body-self dualism that underlies much of today's liberal ethical reasoning. It provides the scholarly community and all intelligent persons interested in the questions it treats with sophisticated philosophical replies to some of the most pressing and indeed culture shaping moral questions of our day.

If one believes as a matter of Faith in the gift of creation and the ownership of man by God his creator, this secularized version of faith is an adequate, though often obtusely worded, defense of that which the beauty of faith better expresses. Faith, however, disguised as philosophy is unpersuasive as the claimed philosophy despite its ornate phrasing -- which seems affected at times -- begs all of its essential questions including what flows from the obvious subordination of body to consciousness even in adults (compare, for example, the respect given quadraplegics and the manner of treatment of an equally unresponsive body of a deceased person), the book has even less explanatory power vis a vis embryos. The difficulty is Lee & George are the supposed (Catholic) philosophical foundation in reason for an entire edifice of harsh (premature) judgment and closed-minded politics that today plays out in ways that ultimately defeat the love of the creation story so much needed to be revived.